Permission To Return
by sumli1
Summary: He walks grandly, sapphire cloak billowing behind him creating a majestic presence, magnificent and grand. His aura is bright, shimmering with colours. His emerald green eyes: piercing, overflowing with tears spilling down pale cheeks.not slash
1. Prologue

**Prologue **

He walks grandly, sapphire cloak billowing behind him creating a majestic presence, magnificent and grand. His aura is bright, shimmering with colours. His emerald green eyes: piercing, overflowing with tears spilling down pale cheeks.

He rushes up the antique spiral staircase up to the solid wooden door, closed until now. He knows what is waiting for him on the other side. He touches the black oak standing between him and his future, an electrifying jolt of adrenaline running through him, powering him up, excited, he pushes it open – knowing he won't be disappointed with what is beyond, knowing that it will not betray him like everything else in his life has before.

The room is painted an oceanic blue, so deep and enticing a colour that one wished to dive right into the midst of it. In the centre of the room on a magnificent bed adorned with shiny black silk throws, lays a box: open and waiting – black velvet. And in this box is a key, sparkling, inviting him to it. The key to unlock all his dreams and hopes, the key to his future. His tearful green eyes full of disbelief, brighten upon seeing his freedom so carefully laid out, awaiting him. He cannot believe he finally has it – the permission to return home.

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A/N: I know it's short but hope you like it! Please leave a review if you do like it or don't. 

There is a question I'd like to ask you though, look at the points I want to include in this story. Shall I put it all in one middle chapter then have an epilogue or shall I split it into chapters, and make it a longer story than just in three instalments?

# What has happened so far.

# Where Harry is now and why.

# Where has he got permission to return to.

# The key's significance

R and R!


	2. Reflecting on What Has Been

Disclaimer: I own the plot, the Cult, the Technokey and Harry's 'DCI' stuff, that's all. 

**THIS CHAPTER IS DEDICATED TO: **LoveHP,wolfawaken, shrivelledshrimp, ALittleinlove : thanks for all your comments, they inspired me for this!

**Reflecting on What Has Been**

Detective Chief Inspector Harry Potter sat straight on his chair, rigid with fear and anticipation at the Superintendent's decision. It had been eleven long and lonely years of hiding, and every year, on this day, he sat in this same chair, in this same office. The walls were a pale, eggshell blue, empty besides two straight-backed office chairs and a desk. And every year he sat full of hope, and yet fear too. He waited for the go-ahead, the permission. And every year the Superintendent would come and sit down and proceed to tell him that the remaining Cult in his home country of the UK were still rampant and could be after him.

The Cult had surfaced eleven years ago in London when Inspector HP was yet still the celebrity teenager, Harry Potter, with an unusually huge and dangerous burden on his shoulders that he was training to remove. At the end of his fifth year at Hogwarts he had been informed by the Headmaster that he and he alone had the power to kill Voldemort and that neither he, nor Voldemort could live whilst the other survived. In the end one was going to, and had to kill the other. But if Harry failed, Dark would rule the world for eternity. In later years, many would gasp in shock and horror at the utter weightiness and burden the Boy-Who-Lived must have felt at first hearing the prophecy. Harry had been given the choice of enlightening one person only about this prophecy and the choice that he had made had surprised many.

Harry vowed to train and beat his nemesis if it took the rest of his life. He was not going to be taken as a fool again as he had been in the Department Of Mysteries at the end of his fifth year. Then, he had been young, foolish and very naïve to believe and run straight into the trap Voldemort had so carefully laid for him in his vision. His carelessness had cost him his Godfather that day, and Harry promised himself once and for all that not one more body would be sacrificed for him and not one more innocent soul would be brutally killed by the Dark Lord because of his own Gryffindor recklessness.

He practised long and hard with his once hated and now very much respected Professor, Severus Snape. The two had formed a friendship of sorts in a way that can only be called a cliché among a pair that had so loathed and detested each other for many a year before. They resolved their differences, swallowed their harsh words and - to the surprise of Headmaster Dumbledore - got along quite well. Of course, Professor Snape's dry, sarcastic humour and derogatory vocabulary was still alive and well, and was instead used as a weapon against the son of Lord Voldemort's former right-hand man: Draco Malfoy, who had fallen, in the eyes of his peers, along with his father Lucius who had been found to be hording a group of his very own Death Eaters to fight against both Harry potter _and_ the Dark Lord.

Lucius Malfoy's downfall had resulted in the humiliation and degradation of his wife Narcissa and also upon the heir of the family: Draco. His father and his associates had been brutally tortured, beaten and tormented at the hands of his fellow Death Eaters and Voldemort himself, but had escaped by means of a portkey that had been tampered into with modern Muggle technology: the Technokey. It had surprisingly resisted all magical wards put up by the Dark Lord himself, allowing Lucius to escape whilst taking advantage of his former Master's surprise, shock and confusion.

Nevertheless, one's downfall can feed another, and Severus Snape, the Dark Lord's most precious Potions Master also became his right-hand man, his confidant in all the ghastly plans to destroy, attack, capture and torture the Muggles and Muggleborn's in the Wizarding World. Unbeknownst to him, Voldemort was selling his own life by doing this, handing over all information of the up coming raids to the one that could do serious damage to him and his troops of Death Eaters. Severus belayed all that he discovered during his meetings with the Dark Lord to Albus Dumbledore and Harry Potter, much to Dumbledore's displeasure. Snape had given his word to Harry that he would never keep him in the dark again about anything, no matter what the Headmaster said. And so, ironically, Severus Snape became Voldemort's sounding board and also Harry Potter's personal trainer in D.A.D.A., Potions, Charms and Transfigurations, and sometimes even chuckled to himself at this thought.

It was whilst training with Severus in the Forbidden Forest for 'The Final Battle' as it had been dubbed that Harry had seen a sparkling silver key embedded with diamonds that lay in the overgrown weeds and magical herbs of the Forest. Without further thought or consideration, he had made his way over to it, and had been bending over to pick it up when he had heard Severus' shout of warning at what he was doing. For years to come, Harry would remember that shout, its following echo in the Forest and his own cry of alarm as his feet were unceremoniously swept out from under him…

A/N: Phew! Just finished writing that, sorry for the delay, I had exams but I was on a roll there!

Well, I hope you like it, and please review.

At the request of my above mentioned reviewers, I am splitting the story up into chapters, oh, and the story ISN'T slash. I wonder, was there any thing in the first chapter that made you think it might be?

_Coming up: What happened to Harry by touching the key_

_Severus' own reaction (shall I write it in his POV?)_

_The consequences of Harry's actions_


	3. Footprints In The Sand

**Disclaimer**: See Prologue

Chapter Three 

"I see that no matter how much my good _ex_-friend teaches you, you'll never lose the Gryffindor recklessness, will you Potter? Or is it _Harry_ that Severus is calling you now? Hmm? I always thought he swung the other way, why else would a young boy like you chose Severus Snape to train with and nobody else? Why else would you disclose of the contents of the prophecy only to him and not your fellow reckless Gryffindors? As Draco tells me, they joined you in all your other reckless adventures so why wouldn't you have told them, eh? It's definitely not an Imperius from Snape or anybody else because I have checked I your mind, and as far as I can see, which is not very far at all so you have been learning, interesting…" Lucius Malfoy was drifting off to a magically induced sleep, mid-rant to a seemingly unconscious, manually and magically bound and _Petrificus'd_ Harry Potter.

_Seemingly unconscious_ being the main part.

Harry was glad that he and Severus had covered how to overcome magical bounds such as _Petrificus _at the beginning of his training. In fact Harry was glad of a lot of things in that moment: one being that Malfoy had decided to wait until Harry regained consciousness again before beginning the more creative forms of torture he had said he had planned, and another being the fact that Malfoy had ordered his cronies out of the torture cell he was being held in. By doing this, Malfoy had made it all the more easier for Harry to begin the internal exercises of Occlumency that enabled him to overpower the Petrificus unconsciously and then begin laboriously healing himself inside and out as Malfoy and his Cult had been very generous with both Muggle-style and magical torture they had inflicted on him for the past three days that they had held him. Malfoy was right too, Harry had been extremely reckless in touching what was obviously a Technokey, and whilst mentally bracing himself from the harsh and brutal blows that were unmercifully raining down on him Harry had also berated himself harshly on his foolishness as Severus' final shout of warning echoed in his ears as each spell hit his body and practically tore it apart with the most unimaginably unbearable pain that can ever be felt.

But despite everything else, Harry was most glad that he had touched the portkey when he was prepared for a session in combat training with Severus and therefore had a dagger strapped to the inside of his left arm. Through the beatings from Malfoy and the Cult, the dagger had pierced his flesh more than enough times but Harry had made sure that he did not complain about that particular pain because he knew it would come into use sometime, even if it was to just stab Malfoy, anything to get out of this hellish situation Harry had landed himself in. With the dagger Harry conspicuously slit the ropes tied around his wrists and waist that bounded him to the heavy iron ring that was fixed onto the floor. Malfoy had joked that Harry's neck would be tied with rope to that ring, and Harry was relieved that things had not come to that stage just yet.

_And they won't ever if I have anything to do with it. _Harry thought ferociously as he frantically freed himself from the various ropes and chains that had bound him together throughout the enduring trial of torture he had just had to bear. "_Not so commandeering now are you Malfoy?" _Threatened Harry in a fierce whisper to the unconscious Lucius Malfoy lying on the cold dark floor in front of him. "_We'll see what your little foot soldiers think of you when they realize what's happened." _Malfoy had been relatively easy to influence with the whispered wandless sleeping charm Harry had spelled on to him. He picked out his wand from Malfoy's robe sleeve and with this, Harry spelled his body to conceal itself with an invisibility spell he had only recently been reading over, and entered into the dark, damp corridor that seemed to lead straight from the cell on to a beach.

_Hmm, that is really odd, we don't have these types of white-fringed sandy beaches in England. And it's so hot! Phew, where is this place? _Harry thought to himself, as the panic began to creep into his heart regarding where he was, which country, how long he had been held, and the way Hogwarts and Severus may have reacted to his disappearance.

Slowly and curiously, Harry walked along the beach, making sure to spell away the footprints left in the sand behind himself, and as he walked, the fear and panic seemed to leave him as he realised that there was absolutely nobody around or anywhere near the beach. Looking back for the entrance he had come out of, Harry realised that he could not see it any more and soon realized that it was concealed with not just magic but with camouflaged sandy coloured fake lizards and beach towels, that had been purposefully and haphazardly been strewn around the area of the entrance to shield it from any curious gazes.

Having ascertained that there truly was nobody around, Harry walked along the beach, hoping to come to some sort of sign that would indicate exactly where he was. When he did see a sign though, it stopped him in his tracks as he gasped in shock:

**SYDNEY HARBOUR THIS WAY**

Australia? He was in Australia? But nobody would ever look for him there!

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A/N: I know it's really short butthat's it for now folks, don't really know anything about Australia do I don't really know if there are or aren't beaches near the Harbour so please excuse me on that if it doesn't make sense. 

I did say that I didn't know what to write so I wouldn't be updating for a while, so be happy people that I had a sudden brainstorm of ideas! Especially as I've got A-level exams coming up next month…

!Read and Review please!

Thanks to all my previous reviewers, and all those of you who read without reviewing (which I know you do cos I've got more hits than reviews on the chapters previously updated) please please review because I need to know what everybody thinks!

byeeee


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